Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene

Book Description: How Happy Is He Who Can Say I Am a Turk? Two concepts stand at the poles of the ongoing debates regarding Turkish national identity: An understanding based on citizenship and an understanding based on ethno-cultural identity. Ahmet Yıldız's analysis deals with the phase in which the emphasis and pressure on ethno-cultural identity was strongest in the process of building national identity in Turkey: the 1919-1939 Period. With the secular claim of national identity, it was implicitly and partially openly! The tension between restrictive religious obligations is evident in this period. But what is most evident are the ethnic predicates of national identity and citizenship. As Ayşe Kadıoğlu stated in the foreword of the book, in this period, the people were 'tasked with being both citizens and Turks'. Ethnicism was integrated and aggressive in the curriculum and language-history policies, in the perspective on the Kurdish Issue and non-Muslim minorities, in settlement and deportation practices, and in assimilationist measures. It manifests itself as an attitude. Ahmet Yıldız examines the historical background of this period, in which the ethno-secular framework of national identity/citizenship narrowed to the utmost, by looking at the formation period of Turkish nationalism, extending from the last phase of the Ottoman Empire to the 'forced pluralism' of the War of Independence. Is the ethnosist understanding of nationalism that left its mark on the period in question temporary or coincidental? Or is there an underlying continuity that determines the official national identity in Turkey? Ahmet Yıldız's book, which is based on a solid theoretical basis, rich details and a careful language, also stimulates this critical debate. Number of Pages: 351Print Year: 2007Language: TurkishPublisher: İletişim Yayıncılık